Book Six: Chapter 181

After the first thirty minutes of wandering through the enormous piles of undelivered gifts, Kisa was forced to take a break and fight back the panic attack that threatened to consume her. Her lungs burned as if she had been running, though she had done little more than stumble and climb. She leaned forward, hands braced on her knees, and concentrated on breathing in slow, measured counts the way she had been taught—four in, hold, six out. The darkness pressed in from every direction, absolute beyond the small, wavering range of her crystalline light. It felt less like an absence of illumination and more like a physical thing, heavy and suffocating, as if the shadows themselves were watching her.

It was during this moment of forced stillness, while her pulse hammered in her ears and her vision sparkled at the edges, that she spotted a pallet stacked with bicycles nearby. The shapes emerged slowly as her panic receded just e